Tech~cordance

Bringing technology and faith into agreement

Category: Tech

Raspberry Pie Lobby Display

There’s a debate in the church world about how effective announcements are. Some belive it’s just so much white noise and not worth the effort. Taking a cue from the world of advertising, messages do get through if done properly or people wouldn’t pay to do it. I think an unobtrusive display with a running loop might be the answer. Here’s how I did it with a Raspberry Pie.

 

                                        

Inexpensive Monitor facing people as they enter the church.

 

Raspberry Pie 2 with the Kodi OpenElec OS.
Pictures are stored on the SD card or use a Dropbox plugin to run with a wireless connection. You’ll find the Slide Show presentation feature in the Picture menu.

 

 

The advantage to using a Raspberry Pie is it’s low power, great graphics capability and low heat output. You can let it run all day (or all weekend when you forget to turn it off) 🙂

 

 

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How to Install Linux Mint

This article will give you a good idea of the Linux installation process. Linux Mint is one of the more popular distros and I use it as my main OS. Be aware that whenever installing any OS to a computer with other software you could loose all your data by accidentally overwriting it. I always prefer to install to a dedicated hardrive. I also prefer installing from a USB device.

Source: How to Install Linux Mint

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All The News You Can Use

Popular source for the latest news about Linux distros and everything thats going on  is right here:

Distrowatch.com

 

 

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Live Streaming

 Live streaming your services can be a great addition to your your ministry. What do you need to consider first?

 

  • Go on the cheap and use Facebook , YouTube or..
  • Use a pay for service like Stream Monkey or Live Stream.
  • Start out with consumer grade equipment or buy pro?
  • One camera shot or more?
  • What will the sound input be?
  • Acquire license to stream worship music?
  • Will musicians accept their worship performance being online?

These are all real world questions I had to answer before streaming our services. Our church runs under 500 so the budget doesn’t allow for big expenditures without establishing some idea of it’s worth to our mission. That’s why I chose the free option and stream to YouTube with the OBS encoder. I use consumer camcorders and the Imillet HDMI to USB  capture devices to get the video into the computer. It’s all done on Linux, of coarse. 🙂 By far the biggest challenge has been sound. I’m coming out of the board into the computer and thankfully OBS has an audio/video sync option which corrects that. I’ve also learned that compression is my friend here but don’t over do it. I’ve acquired the CCLI streaming license. but at this time we don’t stream the worship music. Will your worship team like hearing themselves online? Probably not. Consumer grade equipment and free services like Facebook and YouTube just don’t allow for high quality sound. If they can accept that great, but don’t be surprised if you meet resistance in this area. Finally, you might want to ask yourself if you have the staff or volunteers to do this on a consistent basis. Personally, I don’t like to add a new feature to the ministry unless I’m pretty sure we can pull it off consistently. Much of the ground work will most likely be on you so ask yourself if you’re OK with that and if so roll up your sleeves and press on!

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Video Encode | DVD Rip

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HandBrake is a tool for converting video from nearly any format to a selection of modern, widely supported codecs.

  • Convert video from nearly any format
  • Free and Open Source
  • Multi-Platform (Windows, Mac and Linux)

Get started with HandBrake in seconds by choosing a profile optimised for your device, or choose a universal profile for standard or high quality conversions. Simple, easy, fast. For those that want more choice, tweak many basic and advanced options to improve your encodes.

I’ve used it for years and have found it awesome for personal use a well as church presentations.  Website:  Handbrake

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Stream Videos and Music Over the Network

 

 VLC includes an  easy-to-use streaming feature that can stream music and videos over a local network or the Internet.

Use VLC’s web interface as a remote control to control the stream from elsewhere. Bear in mind that you may not have the bandwidth to stream high-definition videos over the Internet, though.

Thanks to How To Geek. Read the complete article here:  Source:

How to Stream Videos and Music Over the Network Using VLC

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Easy Video Encoding

Arista

Arista is a simple multimedia transcoder, it focuses on being easy to use
by making complex tasks of encoding for various devices simple.
Users should pick an input and a target device, choose a file to save to
and go.

 

Features:
* Presets for iPod, computer, DVD player, PSP, Playstation 3, and more.
* Live preview to see encoded quality.
* Automatically discover available DVD media and Video 4 Linux (v4l) devices.
* Rip straight from DVD media easily (requires libdvdcss).
* Rip straight from v4l devices.
* Simple terminal client for scripting.
* Automatic preset updating.

Look in your Linux repository or download it here: Arista

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Berhinger X32 Hangs Out With Linux

X32This friendship began not long ago when I was looking for a way to easily configure the X32 during soundchecks. With some  donated apparatus we where on our way to having a much more convenient setup using the remote control X32-Edit app for Linux. The LCD screen on the X32 board is sufficient but what a difference when viewing it on the Linux computer’s screen. This also gives you two options for changing settings.

Download the X32 edit app here: X32edit

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Audio Editing

Screenshot from 2014-05-04 15:19:19

Audacity is a feature rich editor for audio that can be mastered for use in little time. Volume boosting, normalizing, leveling and exporting to mp3 are common steps to get that sermon ready for your web page and Audacity is a great tool for getting that done. Most Linux distributions install Audacity by default.

Screenshot from 2015-05-31 19:47:21

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Remote Control

The X32-Edit app for Linux is a very useful tool for quick access to controls while live mixing. I like the ability to adjust or configure something without changing layers on the physical board. You can find it here: Behringer X32 Edit for Linux

Screenshot from 2015-05-22 07:07:38

 

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CD Burning

Brasero
Brasero is a simple but solid CD/DVD burning application. Nothing fancy here, it just gets the job done. Many Linux Distros install it by default.

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All Around Music Player

Clementine2015-05-29 06:40:33Clementine is a great player for CDs, mp3s and other media you need to play in the church. Create playlists, stream different categories of music from the internet. You’ll find it in the Linux repositories.

Clementine2 2015-05-29 06:44:35

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